The General's Garden
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Soundcloud Excerpt
Performed by Michael Lampard-Baritone, Caroline Almonte-Piano |
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Programme Note
After reading the letters written by General Sir John Monash to his family while on active duty at Gallipoli, it struck me as significant that after a long period of intense fighting, all he wanted to know about was his garden. This seems to me to be a longing for, even just a glimpse of his former ‘routine’ life, as an escape from what must have been at times a horrid military campaign.
The General’s Garden uses extracts from letters written by Monash while on active duty at Gallipoli in a very solemn and introspective song. It is very much in the style of the lieder tradition of many late romantic composers, but also includes more modern techniques. The work’s use of modality is often ambiguous, and there is a recurring repeated-note gesture in the piano that forms different rhythmic lengths in shifting time signatures and tempi, but is always the same overall length in terms of time.
Instrumentation: Baritone Voice and Pno
Programme Note
After reading the letters written by General Sir John Monash to his family while on active duty at Gallipoli, it struck me as significant that after a long period of intense fighting, all he wanted to know about was his garden. This seems to me to be a longing for, even just a glimpse of his former ‘routine’ life, as an escape from what must have been at times a horrid military campaign.
The General’s Garden uses extracts from letters written by Monash while on active duty at Gallipoli in a very solemn and introspective song. It is very much in the style of the lieder tradition of many late romantic composers, but also includes more modern techniques. The work’s use of modality is often ambiguous, and there is a recurring repeated-note gesture in the piano that forms different rhythmic lengths in shifting time signatures and tempi, but is always the same overall length in terms of time.
Instrumentation: Baritone Voice and Pno